I THOUGHT we were definitely on the wrong end of a coin toss in the Friends Provident Trophy defeat against Nottinghamshire.

The conditions early on favoured the bowlers and Vikram Solanki said before the game that we would field if he won the toss.

Daryl Mitchell and Moeen Ali played really well to get us thr-ough to the power-plays, with Mitch playing a key innings.

We knew we would need a pretty special bowling and fielding effort because Notts are a fantastic side who bat all the way down.

We did that in the game at New Road, but couldn’t quite stay with them in the end on this occasion.

I think we fought pretty well to stay in the game and take it as long as we did. They were the better side, but the toss was crucial as we lost a couple of wickets to the early movement.

It is a pretty hectic time in the FPT with four games in the space of nine days, starting with today’s home clash with Leicestershire.

The Foxes have not done very well so far, so it is a must-win game for us to bounce back from the Notts defeat.

If we can beat Leicestershire then follow that up with a win against Hampshire at New Road on Thursday, we will have put ourselves in a strong position to qualify from the group.

Our home support was great against Notts when we won emphatically and hopefully the fans will get behind us again today.

Whenever we step out onto the pitch we are under pressure to perform but, as you get older, you get more used to it. The younger guys look up to the more senior players.

I’ve made a pretty good start in one-day cricket and I bowl a lot during the power-plays which makes my overs important.

It’s a nice challenge when people turn to me for wickets during crucial periods of games and I try to make something happen.

Selector Geoff Miller was at New Road last week and he spoke at length with Steve Davies about his omission from the England squad. Steve has years and years in hand — it is OK for the selectors to discard players, that’s their job — but there is no way they have discarded Davo.

He will be an England player for the next 10 years and he is certainly the best keeper-batsman in one-day cricket at the moment. He is working his way up in the four-day game too.

His keeping has been brilliant and against Notts he took a great stumping down the leg side standing up to Matt Mason to dismiss Chris Read, who is someone he looks up to.

Geoff Miller didn’t have a lot, if anything, to say to me, but I know what I’ve got to do to get into the England set-up.

Finally, we weren’t good enough in the four-day game against Lancashire, but we are not hiding from that — we need to do better.

However, Chris Whelan bowled magnificently in that game to take a career-best 5-95. Our bowlers were under pressure because of injuries to others, but Chris stood up to be counted. We all think he will kick on from that performance now.